Grace Darling and Her Islands.

By Constance Smedley (The Religious Tract Society. Is. 6d. net.) Miss SMEDLEY did a public service two years ago when she wrote Grace Darling and Her Times. It was the first full and accurate story of the wreck of the Forfarshire and the events which followed it, and the first full and accurate life of Grace Darling herself. It corrected the popular story in several important particulars, doing justice to the other actors in the wreck and rescue, who had been neglected or misrepresented.

Miss Smedley has now written a shorter life. It is the first book very much abridged. By writing it Miss Smedley has done the memory of Grace Darling a still greater service.

It is intended for children, but older people should read it with equal pleasure. Because it is much shorter, and is published at a very modest price, within the reach of all who buy books, it should induce thousands, to whom Grace Darling at present is only a heroic name, to learn what she did and what she was.

The story of the actual rescue of the survivors of the Forfarshire is told fully, the story of the after-events, and Grace Darling's fame, much more briefly ; but the part of the book for which we are most grateful is the earlier chapters, with their charming account of Grace Darling's happy life on the Longstone Lighthouse, in her wind-swept garden and among the sea birds, which nested in thousands round her home. They show us what it is of most, interest to know—the upbringing and way of life of a girl who, when the crisis of her life came, met it with such determination and courage, and afterwards remained unspoilt and undisturbed by fame.

Miss Smedley has found space to include particulars of the Institution's work and she has corrected an omis- sion, serious so far as the Institution is concerned, in the first book. She now makes it clear that the North Sunderland fishermen who also went out to the wreck, and reached it to find that the survivors had already been rescued, were rewarded by the Institution. There are, however, one or two slips in the references to the earliest efforts at life-saving on our coasts. Lionel Lukin converted a coble into an " unimmergible " boat to be stationed at Bamburgh for life-saving in 1786, not 1876. The Captain Mamby mentioned as the inventor of the rocket apparatus for firing a line to a wreck should be Captain Manby, who invented—not a rocket—but a mortar for this purpose; and Mr. Denman, who is also men- tioned as inventing a rocket apparatus, should be Mr. Dennett..